“Echo Objects: The Cognitive Work of Images, is a spectacular effort of thinking outside discipline boundaries, a sort of interdenominational bible of arts and neuroscience. It is all the more remarkable since the book appears to have required no effort at all, so smoothly and seamlessly it flows from Barbara Stafford’s well-informed mind and dizzying pen.”—Antonio Damasio, author of Descartes’ Error, Looking for Spinoza, and The Feeling of What Happens
(Antonio Damasio, author of The Feeling of What Happens )
“Inspiring and rewarding, Echo Objects displays great learning and an uncommon ability to straddle genres and disciplines, often to kaleidoscopic effect. At the center of all that colorful flux lies Barbara Stafford’s acute critical intelligence, snuggled like a sniper in a jungle. Cognitive scientists, as well as those working in the arts and humanities, have much to learn from this unique and thought-provoking work.”—Andy Clark, author of Natural-Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies, and the Future of Human Intelligence
(Andy Clark, author of Natural-Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies, and the Future )
“Echo Objects is an erudite, sophisticated, pioneering exploration of the ways in which modern neuroscience illuminates the world of images, and of the insights that careful, critical analysis of images can provide to neuroscience. It makes many compelling observations, and opens up numerous questions for further investigation and debate.”—William J. Mitchell, author of Placing Words: Symbols, Space, and the City
(William J. Mitchell, author of Placing Words: Symbols, Space, and the City )
“Echo Objects argues vigorously for a new understanding of images: one that regards them not simply as products of mental operations but as constitutive of such operations and cognitive processes. This book bristles with ideas and innovative connections that draw together cultural, material, and biological analyses of thought and cognition to prod the reader into rethinking the uses and significance of images. Echo Objects is a book to wrestle and argue with. It will draw each reader into a conversation that will prove important, and for many transformative—a conversation that goes to the heart of the importance of the arts and humanities and to the role they play in understanding science, cognition, and images themselves.”The Word of God and the Languages of Man>
(James J. Bono, author of The Word of God and the Languages of Man )
"A heroic book that inlays biology and culture within each other. . . . Echo Objects challenges scientists to leap to more engaging conclusions, by offering them access to the tools of visual analysis, close reading, and reception theories that art history has honed for over a century. . . . The larger message of Stafford’s intense, propulsive prose is unassailable. If we are to get much further in the great puzzle of ''binding''—how the perception of an image, the will to act on intention, or the forging of consciousness is assembled from the tens of thousands of neurons firing at any one moment in time—then there needs to be action on all fronts."—Caroline A. Jones, Science
(Caroline A. Jones
Science )
"A contribution to the growing set of literature expounding the crucial importance of the contemporary neurosciences to scholarship in the humanities."—History & Philosophy of Life Sciences
(
History & Philosophy of Life Sciences )
"Stafford''s aim is to ''insert the cognitive work of images more centrally'' into the enterprise of cognitive science. She achieves her goal and a great deal more besides."—Susan Stuart, Journal of Consciousness Studies
(Susan Stuart
Journal of Consciousness Studies )
"In conception, Echo Objects is easily the most exciting demonstration yet of how a neuroaesthetics might shape up. Crucially, this is a thrilling book to look into: reaching for an astonishing range of often recherché visual material, Stafford thinks with an artist''s eye abou the cross-cultural affinities that indicate patterns of thought common to the whole human species."
(Julain Bell
London Review of Books )
“The wealth of ideas in this book, which sometimes seem disconnected, turns out to be a beautiful chain of up-to-date-cum-ancient jewelry. . . . Echo Objects proves to be a creative, innovative, very interesting, and rewarding work.”—Pragmatics & Cognition
(
Pragmatics & Cognition )
